diversities of indigenous people, by formulating standard frames to ensure the rights and dignity of all indigenous people, Kuper (2003) concludes that there is no global solution for this diversity worldwide. One of the main focuses of this book is to present how indigenous peoples in various parts of the world are simultaneously involved with movements for indigenous peoples’ rights, as well as the struggle to improve their socioeconomic and political positioning in the national space, in order to gain dignity. Identity politics also feature in the indigenous movements in some nation-states, precisely because they are categorically excluded from the process of homogenous nation-building and the majoritarian policies of state formation. Therefore, indigenous peoples try to build relationships with the state that involve a dialectical engagement, in the tradition of Justin Kenrick and Jerome Lewis (2004), who present indigeneity as a sort of relationship—to culture, to land, and to ethnic historiography, or to put it another way, “indigeneity as a cultural concept.” Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka and Gérard Toffin (2011) have taken a similar view in favor of culturalist groups, explaining that indigeneity involves multiple attachments and senses of belonging, which constitute their social and cultural bases. However, many scholars, like Dipesh Chakrabarty (2002), argue that the idea of indigeneity is broadly a political concept, and has nothing to do with culture. Putting aside these debates over whether the idea of indigeneity is a political concept or a cultural one, it becomes important to determine the particular rights for indigenous peoples that ensure a certain level of dignity both as human beings and indigenous people on global and local scales.
Indigeneity, Land, and Resources
Struggles for land resources are one of the major challenges indigenous people face in all parts of the world. This has to do with the common view that land constitutes a core issue of indigeneity. In Chapter 1, Erik de Maaker explores the relationship between modes of land ownership, conceptualizations of land and nature, and notions of indigeneity. He states that the portrayal of upland communities of Northeast India as “indigenous” depends to a large extent on a presumably inextricable relationship between people and land (Karlsson 2011; Li 2010). Upland people are believed to “belong” to their land, and its forests, in the sense that it is considered sacred to them. One way in which this essential bond to the land is expressed is in joint land ownership. In the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, collective ownership was legally secured in the colonial period. Although its original aim was to avoid villagers losing their land, it has been unable to counteract the disparities in power and wealth that have always been prevalent within village communities. Moreover, in much of the Garo Hills there is a tendency towards the privatization of land use, as well as ownership. This commodification of land is unavoidable for the modernization of agriculture, and yet it challenges Garo notions of indigeneity, as well as related perceptions of land and nature. De Maaker, in this chapter, analyzes the transformation of land relationships, the legalities in which these are founded, and the consequences they have for Garo notions of indigeneity.
In another case from Southeast Asia, Ian Baird in Chapter 2 discusses how indigeneity functions as a strong political resource, using the case of land management in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. He brings out the political rhetoric of indigenous people, explaining that over the last couple of decades the concept of “indigenous peoples” has gained increasing traction in Asia, with some countries—such as the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Cambodia—having adopted legislation that recognizes indigenous peoples. Still, other national governments in Asia continue to resist, with many following the “saltwater theory,” which specifies that the concept of indigenous peoples is only applicable in places where there has been considerable European settler colonization (such as the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand). Elsewhere, the concept is seen as irrelevant, since everyone is considered to be indigenous. Still, even in these countries the movement has made some inroads, albeit unevenly, due to varying political and historical circumstances. Much of the increased attention on the concept of indigenous peoples is linked to advocacy associated with attempts to gain increased access and control over land and other natural resources. In this chapter, Baird considers the links between the indigenous peoples’ movement and land and resource tenure issues in three countries in mainland Southeast Asia where the concept of indigeneity is variously recognized.
Becoming ‘Indigenous’
Indigeneity is also challenged by various local, regional, and international political dynamics of identity and locally embedded public and political discourse. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the dynamics of indigeneity depends on how local political rhetoric negotiates with international indigenous activism. In Chapter 3, Gabriele Herzog-Schröder draws our attention to the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil, who are often represented as an “isolated,” indigenous, ethnic group of the South American lowlands, prototypically as Amerindian societies of Amazonia. In the Brazilian part of their territory they have, over the last three decades, been invaded and abused as part of a disgraceful gold rush. However, anthropologists, too, became notorious for inappropriate projections of the Yanomami in Venezuela. Due to this history of invasion and worldwide media attention, the Yanomami have been subject to representation as the stereotypical “exotic” within both anthropological academia and beyond. This widespread publicity has obscured the fact that presently, growing contact with the “outside” world is taking place in quite heterogeneous ways among the Yanomami. While some Yanomami personalities are well informed about city life and symptoms of globalization—for example, the famous Davi Kopenawa from Brazil—the majority of Yanomami have not yet traveled outside their traditional territories. The misrepresentation of indigeneity, and the processes of approximation of an isolated area in southern Venezuela, demonstrate how a gradual understanding of the “outside world” goes hand in hand with the Yanomami’s own understanding of being “indigenous.” At the same time, this new indigenous identity situates the actors as members of a nation, and makes them appear as belonging to a particular indigenous group within a choir of other indigenous people within these newly conceived national complexes. These freshly acquainted forms of identity—being “Yanomami” (as an indigenous group), being indigenous, and being Venezuelan or Brazilian—are contested by a traditional cosmological worldview, in short by being determined as “shamanic.” New forms of “knowledge,” as well as spatial imaginaries—novel to the traditional worldview—are discussed in this chapter, focusing particularly on schooling as an interface between indigeneity and modernity.
The increasing pace of connectivity and networking is helping indigenous activism reach translocal and transnational spaces, which in turn provide transnational incentives to local and national activism. In Chapter 4, Eva Gerharz argues that indigeneity is made use of by activists as a crucial category, one that signifies belonging in various ways, and more or less successfully. Using the case of Bangladesh’s indigenous activist movement and its demands for the recognition of diversity as an example, the article identifies three different domains in which indigenous activism is at work, and locates these within translocal space. In particular, Gerharz shows how international claims to indigenous rights are translated into the national legal framework and how these attempts are being negotiated between actors who draw on globalized concepts and discourses in different ways. A second domain is development, one of the classical fields of international and transnational interaction in Bangladesh, in which indigenous issues have been taken up only recently. These initiatives, however, have provoked quite controversial debates, especially from those actors who seek to preserve indigeneity as a distinct way of life. The third dimension is concerned with the ambiguities emerging from the representation of indigenous people, their culture, and way of life in the public space of the Bengali-dominated national society. These three dimensions, Gerharz argues, rest upon activist configurations that are marked by dynamic boundary-making processes, which are enacted in multiethnic settings and not only allow the inclusion of non-indigenous activists but also foster the exclusion of indigenous people who do
